


Close Encounters of the Sweet Kind

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Space, Crack Treated Seriously, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 14:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19007542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: Onni Hotakainen and his team are on a mission to explore faraway ice planet OGLE-1195Lb and the local alien population. He certainly doesn't anticipate the events that unfold, and just how close he might get to their mission goal. (Not aCity of Hungerfic in spite of a similar setting.)





	Close Encounters of the Sweet Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiraly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, Kira! ♥ 
> 
> Yes, [OGLE-1195Lb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb) is a real planet, and I stuck as close to the facts as I could, though artistic liberty of course comes into play.

The outdoor gate closed behind him, the alarm switched from red to green, and Onni heaved a sigh as the airlock hissed open in front of him. He could remove the helmet of his protective suit, finally, and run a hand through his hair. The air in the hub smelled stale and metallic, always, after the sweat-swampy interior of the suit, designed to retain and maximize body heat in the unlivable frozen outdoors of OGLE-1195Lb. 

He pulled his instrument belt from around his hips and walked down the ramp leading deeper into the hub, his boots echoing on the metal planks as he began reading the measurements he'd taken outside to the station-wide comm and recording system. At least that was still active, not victim to another of their damn system breakdowns. At temperatures like the ones on OGLE, it was tricky to keep any electronics operating reliably, and the automatic transfers from the different measuring stations broke down more often than not - needing someone to go out and manually check the readings. As the science and security officer of the expedition, it fell to him more often than not, and he rather went alone than taking any of the critical personnel with him in case of an accident, even if he broke his own protocol that way. 

"Temperature measurements at -214°C windchill at glacier peak checkpoint and -187°C at vessel landing site." Onni continued rattling down temperature, ice thickness and density, precipitation and atmospheric composition at the five sites he'd visited on his outing, and finished with a dispirited, "no visual contact or other engagement with native population." 

The system chirped to acknowledge his recording and began playing it back to him for a checkup as Onni changed out of his outdoor gear and made it to the lab and into the adjacent ice core storage. He began to unload his samples from the backpack he carried and file them away for analysis later. At least if Mikkel, cook and medical officer of the expedition, didn't play another of his infamous pranks and melt Onni's research down into water for their tea. Again.

 _... or other engagement with native population,_ the system concluded just as Onni slipped the last of the cores into storage. Then the airlock alarms started blaring, and in the echoing architecture of the hub, the hiss of the opening airlock was too loud for comfort even this far down. 

Onni squawked. A moment ago he'd wanted nothing but a hot shower and a quiet evening to rest from his ordeal. Not this. Not that he wanted his shower-and-quiet any less now, strictly speaking, but his priorities snapped to keeping the rest of the crew safe - Tuuri and Lalli most of all. When he arrived at the airlock with his gun in hand, it was to the sight of the outdoor gates sliding shut, the airlock re-pressurizing, and the alarms shutting down. 

Onni rubbed his arms in the lingering chill. Now, just dressed in a sweater and pants, it became more clear how icy and life-threatening the outsides actually were. This couldn't happen again, unless they wanted to compromise the entire station; even the social quarters belowground. The planet would freeze them solid in a heartbeat. 

"Lalli!" Onni barked at the comm, hoping to wake his cousin, or get him back to attention from the annoying blond nuisance whose family had financed the research under the condition that their son accompany them, and who'd subsequently burrowed his way into Lalli's heart. And pants. 

No answer from Lalli, so Onni barked again. "Lalli!! What just happened?! Was anyone else scheduled to be outside?" 

A speaker crackled to life. To Onni's eternally grateful ears, Lalli sounded sleepy rather than distracted. "No. It was nothing. Just some weirdness after you came in. I'm running scans." 

Lalli acted as secondary security detail, mostly keeping watch over the station, life support, assorted systems and personnel from behind his computer screens, but so far it had been an eventless job more often than not. The worst he'd had to work his computer magic on had been system malfunctions like the translators that suddenly reverted to everyone's native language and left Tuuri hopping around trying to keep up communication because only part of their team had bothered to learn Icelandic. 

Onni could hear Lalli's clothes rustle as he shrugged. "Nothing. System malfunction, cold got into the system and messed with controls when you made entry." 

A breath of relief escaped Onni's lips, along with the momentary fear and annoyance by the alarm, even though he was glad it'd come to nothing. "I'm going to shower and sleep. Don't bother me." 

* * *

The bathroom had filled with so much steam that it was condensing into drops of water on the walls and rendered the room into more of a sauna than anything else, but at least Onni felt thawed, even somewhat relaxed, after the shower. 

He'd gone over the incident with the airlock all over again while the hot water had rained down on him, to no more conclusion than what Lalli had said - a system malfunction due to the cold, and hardly unusual given the hub's track record for that sort of thing. It'd reset itself without fuss. There was no reason to worry.

Then why couldn't he get rid of the itching in the back of his head, some peculiar unease that he couldn't either deny or explain?

Onni reached for a towel to dry himself off, when a figure emerged from the mist with a cheerful "Hello!" 

He squawked indignantly, dropping the towel in his confusion - why was anyone bothering him in the shower and _who_ was bothering him in the shower?! 

There came a squawk in response, and absurdly it sounded… cheerful? 

"What the…" Onni muttered under his breath, swallowed, and took a step closer. He knew that voice. 

It was his own. 

The shape in the shower mist looked like his own. Hair, facial features, height, build. 

It paused when Onni paused. 

It took a step toward him when Onni took a step back. 

Then the world slipped and tilted as Onni's feet tangled in the towel, he slipped, and the last thing he heard before the world went black was the back of his head colliding with the shower tiles and a muttered "What the…?" 

It still sounded cheerful. 

* * * 

Onni came to feeling like someone had parked the landing vessel inside his skull and left the engines running. The bathroom had cooled considerably, and he couldn't help the shivers running down his body. 

He sat up to look around, remembering dimly - the other him, the… had he been hallucinating? Nothing made sense, how could there be two of him? 

It was really cold. On all fours, Onni crawled back into the shower cabin, punched the shower into running, and sighed in relief when hot water started raining down on him. Maybe if he replicated the conditions of him coming out of the shower, the apparition would return? Maybe there was something in the water? In the interest of saving weight and thus money on the flight, they had opted to source it from the ice and snow on OGLE after it'd been deemed safe for human contact and consumption by a probe beforehand, but maybe they'd encountered a problem they weren't aware of yet. 

If so, Onni was very willing to let himself be the lab rat for it, especially since, logically, he'd already been exposed. At least his head had stopped throbbing, and he couldn't feel any notable bump or bleeding that he'd have to explain away. 

He stayed in the shower while the room once more filled with steam and warmth crawled back into Onni's fingers and toes. Finally, he peeked out looking for anything out of the ordinary, but there was nothing there, just a steam-filled bathroom. 

With the exception of the door into his quarters standing open. Just a crack, but definitely open. 

He was sure he'd closed it. 

* * * 

From the hub's living room (or what counted as that on an alien planet), Onni could hear Sigrun's laughter, and Tuuri whooping. At least that meant these two had to be fine, didn't it? He fully expected to come into the room to find their social liaison, astro-ethnologist and pilot cuddled up to their expedition captain and resident military woman in their pillow-pile in the corner in front of the holoscreen, by the sounds of it playing some game or other. 

He poked his head in and involuntarily ducked as a holographic troll slithered past him and light blasts from two game guns whizzed after it. The troll disintegrated in a shower of sparks, and he heard Tuuri crow, "That was mine! My troll!" 

"No way! I hit it first!" Sigrun objected. "Everyone knows I'm the better shot!" 

"Booooooo-" Tuuri began, quieting only when Sigrun kissed her silent and Onni looked away. Space was big and lonely, and while he'd come to terms with Sigrun and Tuuri in spite of their many differences (if not so much with Lalli and Emil), he couldn't help feeling a little wistful-awkward at displays like theirs. 

"-oooo," Tuuri continued when the kiss ended, sounding out of breath but grinning broadly. "-ooo-O-oh! Onni!" 

Onni cleared his throat. "Tuuri. Can I talk to you?" 

"Sure," she said, reluctantly disentangling herself. "What's up now? And where'd your mood go?" 

"My… mood? When? I was out all day and only just got out of the shower." He left out the strange encounter and hitting his head, for now. 

"No you weren't, you just left five minutes ago! And you were smiling. I and Sigrun were wondering what was wrong with you. Don't try to deny it, it was nice!" 

Onni pulled his lips back in what he hoped might pass as a smile. Tuuri shook her head at him in a way that he knew meant _please don't do that_ , but followed him out into the corridor and let the door close behind her. 

"So, what do you want?" 

"Which aliens can shapeshift?" Onni asked without preamble. It seemed, all in all, the most logical explanation for what he'd witnessed in the bathroom, short of it being a hallucination or water-induced contagion. He'd taken samples from the shower and carried them to his lab before heading to the living room, but it'd be a while until the results became available, and if he'd been in the living room but - it hadn't been him - then that probably was a moot point. "Involving shapes, voices, possibly mannerisms," he added. 

"Uhm," Tuuri replied and began rattling down a number of alien species and their planet of origin, but some candidates were ruled out from the get-go by customs, lack of spaceflight tolerance, distance, or atmospheric conditions on OGLE. 

".... there's the Iktet, Xhpo'e, Uqain and… well. Vilirian poetry indicates that our Ogleites here can do it, but their poetry is so… special, really, that it needs a grain of salt the size of Jupiter. They could write you epics about Kitty's litterbox that'd make you cry. Or, you know, if things generally didn't make you cry." 

Onni pursed his lips, but if his sister wanted to be immature, he'd not indulge her this time. "What are the odds that one of them would want contact with us? They haven't even taken the bait for our video traps."

"Hmmm. Not a lot, I guess? I wouldn't know, honestly, they're so elusive. I know the Viliri and Deleunn-147 have kept them as pets before, just like they do with everything, and they tend to… imprint on one organism that they form strong bonds with, and they're generally polite to a fault, friendly and very social by nature - their life circumstances here favoured evolution that selected for that sort of thing - and they act like it if they're given the choice of whether or not to do that outside their native colonies."

"So… where is it now?" 

"What?" Tuuri perked up; her voice morphed into a squee. "You mean there's one here? _You saw one???_ " 

Onni nodded slowly, unsure whether he ought to be excited or apprehensive. To study the inhabitants of OGLE-1195Lb was one of the most important parts of their mission, but he had not expected to have to deal with an alien loose in the hub, much less one looking, currently, like him. 

* * * 

"Ah. Did you sober up, or coming back for another hug?" Mikkel rumbled when Onni entered the kitchen with Sigrun and Tuuri in tow. The smirk on Mikkel's face reminded Onni unpleasantly of the claim Tuuri had made about his mood earlier. 

"That wasn't me." Onni told him about the Ogleite somewhere around, and the pan that Mikkel was drying clattered to the floor with the sound of metal on metal. 

They continued their search as four, next moving to the control room door. Onni hoped he'd not walk in on Emil and Lalli in any sort of a compromising position again - twice was enough by far - and was relieved to find them both hunched over the monitor panel. 

On the big screen that covered the far wall of the room, camera footage was rewinding; Onni saw himself skittering out the airlock into the station, the doors closing, then a stretch of uninterrupted nothing apart from Kitty hopping past the entrance, and then.... Onni once more, coming out of the hub with the ice core backpack on and fiddling with the measurement tools on his belt, flattening his hair and donning his helmet, then skittering back out _again_. That, at least, explained the door malfunction, and why Lalli had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. 

Emil looked flabbergasted. His left eye twitched. Lalli turned slowly to them, his eyes wide. "Onni? Are you real?" 

"I think so," he said, though right now he certainly didn't feel it. Maybe he was still hallucinating. "Can you track them?" 

Lalli nodded, hit a button, and the feed began running forward, jumping from camera to camera as not-Onni made their way through the station.. 

* * *

They found the Ogleite in Onni's quarters, curled around Kitty on Onni's bed. The cat was rumbling a loud, contented purr that became audible as soon as the door slid open, and blinked her eyes at them with all the disquiet of that of a queen just waking from a pleasant nap, which was arguable the case. 

The Ogleite, it seemed, was also sleeping, and they didn't stir when the rest of the team crowded into the bedroom, until Onni reached out and touched the Ogleite's shoulder.

They jerked awake, spooking Kitty who took a flying leap into Sigrun's arms, and _squawked_. It was the same sound Onni had heard - Onni had made, even - running into the creature in his bathroom, but being face to face with himself and the weird noises that came out of his own mouth…

Onni backed away, also squawking. The sound felt oddly inevitable. 

Tuuri cackled, but the Ogleite seemed to take it as encouragement. Their eyes lit on Onni - the real Onni, and it was unnerving enough to have to make eye-contact in the first place, much less with himself when _it wasn't in a mirror_ that Onni's chest felt too tight to breathe for a second as the Ogleite came after him, and wrapped their arms around Onni, pressing their bodies together into a somehow-perfect, warm, comfortable fit.

Onni's knees gave. The Ogleite followed him down with another cheerful squawk. "Hello! Hello! Hello!" 

* * *  
"Okay, so… you need a name," Tuuri said as they were all seated in the living room around the Ogleite, who had already. edged closer to Onni out of the middle of the circle. "If you don't have one, that is," she said. 

"Onni," they said, cheerfully. 

"No, that's _my_ name," Onni said. He couldn't help a scowl, remembering what Tuuri had said about imprinting before, and most of his thoughts that moment didn't circle around scientific acclaim, and rather along the lines of 'why me'. 

"Onni," said the Ogleite, and their face lit up. They scooted closer on their pillow, a little more, and laid their head on Onni's shoulder. 

Onni bit his lip to keep his silence, and clenched his fists to keep from slamming the alien into a wall. He knew they weren't dangerous, especially not to him, now they'd chosen him as their… liaison, he supposed, and Tuuri had supplied a few more details about the role of sacred body heat and its importance to the Ogleites, that they'd always seek it, and most often from their imprintee. If the team turned this one back out into the ice, they would invariably freeze, and not even Onni had it in him to do that. They had to stay, at least until Tuuri could repair the snow rover to take them back to the Ogleites' cave colonies, heated by their own bodies, mental connection and sense of community that helped them, somehow, grow a number of berry-bearing plants photosynthesizing with black leaves that were their main nourishment. For all that, the Ogleites were highly intelligent, friendly, curious, and an increasing number of them had opted to risk death to explore other species that came to OGLE on scientific missions, but none so far had made contact with humans, and the accessibility of other sources was… lacking. They didn't even know their autonym, although given the alien's behaviour, _Ogleite_ seemed almost hilariously on point. 

"Do you have a real name?" Onni asked now. "Something that your people call you?" 

The Ogleite paused. They opened their mouth and moved their lips, and Kitty's ear's pricked up; her tail twitched excitedly. Onni… heard nothing. 

The Ogleite smiled, clearly pleased. Onni felt shivers crawl over him yet again to see that expression on his own face, but not. They said, after a moment, "It is a nice name. I like my name. It talks about the light of the sky on the berries of our plants where the ice lets it pass. It is blessed and wards off predators." 

The sky on OGLE was dim, and Onni couldn't imagine what life must be like in the Ogleite caves in even lower light. The planet orbited a brown dwarf that, unlike the sun of Earth, emitted low-energy red wavelengths down to infrared, and most often in between the ice and the stars there was a reddish haze bordering on grey where it was lightest. 

"Red light on berries…" Onni mused. "Red berries." His mind was thinking in Icelandic: It seemed fitting that, in the faraway possibility that the alien would accompany them to Earth after the mission concluded, they should have a meaningful name that everyone might understand or at least respect. 

Onni smiled. Seeing from the corner of his eye, he saw his expression mirrored yet again, and the Ogleite pulled themself up straight to pay attention. 

"Reynir," he said. "A tree with red berries on our home planet. It is used in warding magic, too." 

"Reynir," the Ogleite repeated. "Reynir is my name now." 

They threw their arms around Onni, and squeezed him. Strangely, Onni minded it a little less of a sudden.


End file.
